Page 14 of Torn

He won’t agree. But knowledge is power, and Malice is dangerous, both of which provoke Anger to join the outcast. They track from the Carnival of Stars to the city’s west end, which is posher and more sterile than Merry’s home in the east. This sector boasts townhouses, a library, and Midnight Park, where Anger had witnessed Malice charging after Merry.

Anger recalls that absurd skirt she’d been modeling. A knee-length mesh of prismatic pastel. A rather optimistic piece of clothing to wear while navigating a skateboard.

Malice guides Anger into the library, producing a skewer device that jimmies the back door. The rascal could just wrest the entrance open with a mighty flourish of his wrist, but while Malice doesn’t give the impression of caring about vandalism, nor about obligating inferior beings to repair the damage, his ministrations indicate that he respects this landmark too much to deface it.

It’s a cavernous and grand space with numerous corridors of built-in bookshelves. Strands of ivy dangle from the ceiling, forming a leafy canopy over desks and reading chairs, like a hybrid atrium and book repository.

The interior is drafty, smelling of old pages, cleaning agents, and intention. If Anger were human, his boots would echo on the polished floor.

Down a stairway, they descend into the very throat of the library and reach a crypt, the subterranean ceiling indicating a vault that might house rare and brittle books, although Anger doesn’t see any chronicles.

Camping here is disrespectful to both the mortal and immortal worlds. Anger cares less about the former, more about the latter. He’s no longer in the business of offending his betters.

Nonetheless, it’s amusing. Malice hasn’t opted to create an invisible home of his own. Instead, this abominable stray has chosen to squat in a mortal structure. An erudite one, at that.

One might speculate if there’s an additional reason for this.

A pit occupies the room’s center, fire writhing from its belly. Under a lone basement window, a telescope cranes its neck. It’s a rickety, rusty model, from perhaps two centuries ago.

Putting it mildly, Malice is an eclectic being if one counts the rocking chair fronting the blaze, and the crate of sepia-stained envelopes and letter leaflets on the floor. This, plus the library itself.

All that’s left to question is where the fuck he’s stashing the taxidermy cobras.

Mounted on a wall, Anger spots Malice’s archery. The quiver, longbow, and arrows are carved from hickory—everything but the fletching, which is comprised of turkey feathers. The result is beautifully robust, but still. Of all the materials that Malice could have forged his weaponry from, he’d selected the most elementary, the most basic combination.

The most inherently human option.

Either the library staff seldom frequents this vault, or the interior decorating is imperceptible to the mortal eye. It’s likely a case of both.

Anger grasps his own longbow. As a fellow divinity, he cannot—and doesn’t need to—tap into Malice’s emotions, the way deities can with mortals. He’s nevertheless hyperaware of the atmosphere, the essence hostility and the barbed texture of spite. Evidently, Malice has bottled all his rancor down here, storing it for a rainy day.

Which might be today, depending on what he’s about to propose. Arguably, he’s one reply—yesorno—away from changing his mind about Anger. Whenever denied something, it’s easy for allies to suddenly become haters. Even easier for a rage god.

Anger would know. The last time he saw Love—the last timeshesawhim—he’d assured the goddess that he would never hate her, even though that’s the impression he’d given since their youth, growing up together in the same class of archers.

In a way, Anger has retracted that fact.

In a way, he now hates Love as much as he adores her.

But that’s neither here, nor there. He has an audience.

Malice fixes him a drink from a table against the wall, liquid sloshing from a flask and fizzing into a cup. There’s a charge in the air, something that could power the city. This extremist radiates faith and disbelief, gratitude and resentment. It’s coiling from one end of him to the next.

Malice asks, “What do you think? You fancy my home, away from home, away from home?” Without waiting for a reply, he turns and hands over the drink. “I’ve been told alcohol is good for hydration. Be my guest.”

Anger releases the grip on his bow. He loathes the impulsion worming up his limbs: belonging. One would think it’s been a while since anyone glanced at him with kinship.

Actually, it’s been an hour.

The inflammatory memory of Merry’s hands resurfaces. The nettling ache that he’d felt when she’d touched him. The way he’d retreated like a coward, like a bull harassed by a lamb.

Anger takes the cup and squeezes it. He doesn’t give a shit about hospitality. He’s not about to guzzle the unidentified contents, the stench of which has been scooped from a gutter and fermented.

More accurately, it stinks of noxious pomegranates.

Malice settles into the rocking chair, a saddlebag hanging like a noose from the head rest. The chair’s legs creak as he tips back and forth, one of his calves propped over the opposite thigh. “Not thirsty?”

“Not stupid,” Anger clarifies.

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